Shopify Tips: Customer Support Methods That Work

Customer support is one of the most important pillars that make businesses stand strong and remain profitable for a long time. It’s a well-known fact and has even become a tenet among business owners that failure to provide efficient customer support means overall failure and disaster.

That is why many apps have sprung up and around the world, the industry we all know as BPO or Business Process Outsourcing has been born. Customer support really is an important part of business development and that is the reason why there’s an abundance of tools, plugins and apps out there that are capable of being integrated with the different e-commerce platforms including Shopify.

Through the years, customer support and providing after-order services to customers has evolved and as the digital landscape expanded and welcomed e-commerce and other businesses to its all-inclusive platform, customer support continued to evolve further.

In this article, we are going to learn about the three main methods of customer support that Shopify stores actually use and give examples of the best apps out there that is able to make the task of communicating with customers and solving their issues a lot easier. But before that, let’s briefly discuss the reasons why you need to establish a strong customer support strategy for your business.

Why Customer Support?

Why not? Customers are your business’s lifeline and it is but normal that you provide them with every good thing possible and that includes after order services such as customer support. Issues will always arise within a customer’s overall journey in dealing with your business and a responsible owner; you’ll need to make sure that one of your employees is there to assist.

Customer support simply is a crucial part of a business that without it, everything will fail. Just think of the implications that it would result to and the trouble your business would face if customers start complaining and reporting your venture to the authorities. You’ll suffer being blocked and red tagged by banks and credit unions.

You surely don’t want those disasters to come your way and if those reasons are not yet enough, here are even more for you to consider:

- Customer support preserves and maintains good business reputation

- It keeps your most loyal customers loyal to your business

- It protects your business from future disasters originating from unresolved complaints

- It strengthens your business’s standing and makes it stronger than its competitors

- It serves as a pool of suggestions and feedback from customers which you can use for further business growth and development

- Customer support offers insight on which aspects of the business or product needs to be improved

- It encourages customers to order even more since they become more confident in ordering and making business with you because they know that any problem can easily be solved in case something happens

Customer support contributes much to the welfare and overall growth of a business that it has become a need for both online and offline ones to really create a team that takes care of every customer issue. For your online Shopify store, here are some of the methods of customer support that are available.

Customer Support Methods That You Can Try

There are several ways on how you can take care of customer’s issues no matter at what stage they occur within your business process. You actually don’t a lot of agents, you just need a few efficient ones and here are the different methods that you can use.

1. LiveChat Support

Customers appreciate businesses that provide real-time customer support. Whether you’re selling physical products or you’re offering subscriptions, app downloads, e-books, or any other product, having an online chat support team would really boost customer’s confidence and trust towards your business. Compared to email support, online chat support assures customers of help when they need it the most. And if your business runs on the Shopify platform, integrating a chat support feature will be a lot easier when you use apps. Here are some of the most popular ones that most Shopify businesses use.

- Gorgias

- Zendesk Live Chat

- Tidio Live Chat

- JivoChat

- Tawk.to

- Re:amaze

- Chatra Live Chat

- Facebook Messenger

- Pure Chat

- eDesk

- WhatsApp

There still are a lot of other apps out there that can enable chat support for your online shop and the method of implementation is different for each one but if providing real-time issue resolution is your aim then any of these apps will work perfectly. If you want to find the perfect one then make sure to visit the official site for each app to find out how they work.

2. Email Customer Support

Another method of providing customer support and issues resolution is through email. If you’ve got thousands of customers to take care of and resolve issues for then having an email customer support is going to be a perfect solution. Some Shopify businesses even combine live chat and email support so customers who urgently need help can contact customer support via live chat while those who don’t need urgent help can choose to send email instead.

Not all of your customers would have the time to chat with your support team so providing them with a way to send their issues to your customer service agents which can be queued for future resolution is very important. Listed below are the best email customer support apps that you can install into your Shopify store business.

- Zendesk Support

- Gorgias Helpdesk

- Chatdesk – Email & FB Support

- UVdesk eCommerce Helpdesk

- Verloop.io

- Richpanel Customer Support CRM

- WhatsApp Helpdesk + Marketing

- Reamaze Helpdesk

- eDesk: Live Chat & AI Helpdesk

Once again, there are still a lot of other email support apps that you can use and integrate into your Shopify business. Some of the ones we listed above even have a live chat feature combined with the normal email helpdesk suite. The beauty about these tools is that they offer much features that make the job of your agents a lot easier. For instance, it is easy to locate certain orders, copy customer names, locate shipped orders via tracking numbers and more.

It is even possible to save response templates via “macros” so that responding to issues that have similar concerns will be a lot faster. With response templates are saved, customer support agents no longer need to type in new response for every customer but instead, they can save a template which all of the team can use for similar issues and concerns.

3. Phone Support

Lastly, we come to the third and the last method of customer support that we’d like to share with you in this article and it is the traditional phone support. But unlike the old way which needed landline phones and a big office space where agents report in order to do work, phone support nowadays has been made easier and agents can even do work at the comfort of their homes.

And if you’re looking for a phone support app that can work with your Shopify business then we’ve got some of the best ones listed below. Phone support is perfect especially for premium products and subscriptions. It means those that costs more money and bears higher risk on the part of the customers. Providing phone support and giving customers a chance to talk to a real person in real-time will increase assurance and trust towards your business.

It allows you to show some seriousness and commitment towards providing high-quality service and allows customers to feel assured that the money they paid won’t go to waste. Here are some of the top-performing phone support apps that work seamlessly with Shopify.

- EasyCall – Phone Number & Call (Integrates with Gorgias)

- Click to Call Button

- Advanced Voice Mail

- Trunkd Click-to-Call

Phone support is one effective customer support method especially when you’re selling products or providing services that costs much. It adds credibility to your business and increases trust among customers. There are some other apps out there that you can use to provide phone support for your Shopify business and you may even use a third-party one then use it in conjunction with any of the live chat and email support apps we’ve given above. The secret is having an efficient customer support team and training them to be as efficient and knowledgeable as possible.

Conclusion

There are several  ways to address issues and resolve customer problems for every business but when it comes to Shopify, there are several tools that you can use and apps that you can install in order to get the job done. Look into the needs of your customers and see which method would work well for your business.

Thankfully, most of the apps we shared above actually has both live chat and email support which is great since you will not be paying monthly subscription for 2 separate apps which does the same job. But any of these apps will be useless if your customer support team isn’t as efficient and knowledgeable about your business as you are. So be sure to also train them and get them acquainted with every detail about your business.

Customer support should always top any business priority that you might have and once you put enough focus and dedication in building a strong one, you’re sure to achieve success and business development in the long run.

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